Study takes look at bike helmet use

Sometimes you just know that you're lighting the fuse to a powder keg.

I knew that some people would be upset when I wrote a confessional column July 31 that I sometimes wear a bike helmet, sometimes don't, and that I really preferred the latter.

Boom!

I got the whole "role model" sermon bit and guilt trips with stories about people not wearing helmets who were killed or severely injured. I was called "irresponsible," "stupid" and "hypocritical."

Since then, I went to Europe and took my bike helmet despite it taking up a lot of luggage space. While there, I biked a lot more than usual (mostly wore the helmet) and also happened to notice that Europeans have helmet habits a bit like mine. Those on long bike rides or trips on the open road wore helmets.

Of those pedaling around busy Innsbruck, Austria, and Munich, Germany, maybe 20 percent wore helmets.

But really the main reason I'm picking this hot potato back up is because I did get one e-mail that prompted it.

In the column, I noted all the people on the Charleston peninsula who don't wear helmets and that it would make "a perfect opportunity for a local study on helmet use."

Lo and behold, one apparently has been under way for three years by Tom and Lisa Thomson Ross, both associate professors of psychology at the College of Charleston.

On Sept. 4, Lisa e-mailed me saying they have surveyed more than 300 students on bicycle helmet use. Of those, 75 percent say they have been injured while riding (no specifics), 60 percent know someone who has been in an accident, 46 percent own a bike helmet and only 12 percent wear one.

"This (helmet use) is in line with the national average among college students, which ranges from 10-25 percent," says Lisa, adding that the rate for adult cyclists was only 5 percent.

The reasons for wearing a helmet, she says, are varied.

"Compared to nonwearers, helmet wearers were less likely to think they were invulnerable to the harm that might result from not wearing one, and they expressed a stronger perceived danger of cycling. Those who wear helmets believed that having a bicycle accident could result in more serious harm to them and their futures, and they reported more emotional benefits and safety benefits of wearing a helmet."

She adds, too, that helmet wearers had "fewer issues with cost and personal vanity and discomfort."

"Lastly, helmet wearers reported more prompts from friends and family to wear one, they recalled more parental rules in childhood to wear one and they remembered being exposed to community and media prompts to wear one. Taken together, these beliefs substantially differentiated students who do versus don't wear a helmet," Lisa says, adding that 77 percent of students indicated they would wear a helmet if a mandatory helmet law for adults were passed.

The Rosses eventually plan to conduct an intervention study to see if they can increase the number of college students wearing a helmet.

Lisa, citing more statistics (about 150,000 bicyclists suffer head injuries and 10,000 are hospitalized with those injuries every year), urged not only me, but family members and friends to support wearing bike helmets.

Reach David Quick at 937-5516 or dquick@postandcourier.com.